Chapter Fourteen: New Intelligence
Page (1/3)
This time, the intelligence concerned the same old three categories: ingredients, diners, and the food market.
Two ordinary pieces, and one rare.
[Ingredient Bulletin (Rare)]: Beneath the blazing midsummer sun, plump chili peppers hang thickly from the branches across the rolling hills and terraced fields. This gift from a distant land has now taken root across the vast culinary map of China, setting the soul of countless dishes ablaze with its distinctive flavor. It has even been transformed into a flowing gold: chili oil.
[By reading this ingredient bulletin, you have obtained the recipe for chili oil.]
...
If the system’s intelligence had not been provided only in written form, without any video, Chen Zhou would have suspected that he first needed to watch an episode of A Bite of Chili Peppers.
“Forget the advertisements. I’m grateful enough that I don’t have to watch those!”
The method for making chili oil was etched into Chen Zhou’s mind. Like the muscle memory he had developed for making steamed buns, it had become an unforgettable memory.
Though it could hardly be called a recipe, chili oil was a practical seasoning, and it would certainly come in handy once he expanded into food service.
Next—
[Diner Update]: The husband and wife who ran Jinda Tobacco and Liquor would be visiting your business in the next few days.
Tobacco and liquor shops, courier stations, convenience stores, and barbershops were known as the four pillars of any neighborhood.
They could be found around nearly every residential complex.
Jinda Tobacco and Liquor was the shop right outside Chen Zhou’s housing compound.
If the couple came by, Chen Zhou thought it would be worth paying them a little attention and becoming familiar with their faces.
That would make it easier to ask about the shops around the neighborhood later.
After all, walking straight into someone’s store and asking, “How much is your rent?” showed a distinct lack of an adult’s sense of boundaries.
Finally—
[Market News]: Tianli, a local vinegar maker with a century-old factory, is holding a summer promotion, including special discounts for small vendors.
Chen Zhou knew the brand all too well.
Nearly half the vinegar sold in the local market was produced by Tianli.
The pickled cucumbers he had made two days earlier had used their vinegar as well.
He had never expected them to offer special discounts for small businesses and street vendors.
It was worth taking a look.
This was already the third time the intelligence had refreshed, and Chen Zhou had drawn some conclusions about the differences between the various intelligence levels.
Ordinary intelligence was always rather broad and general. How it was ultimately used depended largely on the choices Chen Zhou made himself.
When it rose to the rare level, however, the information density increased considerably, and the intelligence became far more specific and valuable.
Examples included the recommended price for an antique plate and the steamed-bun recipe from a chef who had cooked for state banquets.
...
There was an old saying among street vendors: “When the wind blows, business is cut in half; when it rains, it is finished altogether.”
The weather forecast predicted showers that evening. Chen Zhou had no intention of risking his buns being drenched, so he decided to take the day off.
Page (1/3)
Page (2/3)
As luck would have it, he had time to visit Tianli’s exhibition.
Steamed buns dipped in vinegar were a perfect combination.
“Yifan, I need to take the car out today!”
“Mm. Gas prices are going up tomorrow, so it’s lucky I just filled the tank.”
His wife had her own intelligence system for managing the household economically.
And so the family stuck to their usual arrangement, with Chen Zhou driving his wife and daughter to work and school.
When Chen Taotao heard the news, she hurried over to Chen Zhou and whispered mysteriously,
“Daddy, can you take us in that little car?”
Chen Zhou bent down.
“Which one? The electric scooter?”
There was no way three people could fit on that.
Chen Taotao nodded excitedly, hopping up and down as she gestured.
“The clunk-clunk one!”
So she meant his little food cart.
It was rare for a street-vending father not to be disliked by his daughter.
But he could take her, certainly—except that if he drove it away, he might not be able to drive it back.
In the end, all he could do was invite his daughter to come pick him up after work the next time he went out to sell buns.
In the kitchen, Ms. Lin was fussing over breakfast that morning.
She paid more attention to balanced nutrition than Chen Zhou did.
Eggs, milk, fruits and vegetables, and slices of whole-wheat bread that had been crushed beneath Chen Zhou’s jar of pickled cucumbers in the refrigerator.
The guiding principles were speed, nutrition, and an entirely unremarkable taste.
That morning, Chen Taotao had neither enjoyed anything delicious nor gotten her wish to ride in the “clunk-clunk” cart.
All she could do was blow bubbles in her milk.
“I don’t want to go to school...”
...
After dropping his wife off at work, Chen Zhou drove to Tianli’s vinegar exhibition in the neighboring district.
As he drew closer to the exhibition center, he could already smell the rich, pungent scent of vinegar.
By the time he entered the hall, his nose had nearly grown accustomed to it.
At the booths, the hosts were reading promotional slogans with great passion, phrases such as “A Century of Aged Vinegar” and “Crafted with Meticulous Care.”
Apart from Tianli’s employees, the attendees appeared to consist mainly of large supermarket chains and distributors.
Some wore matching uniforms; others displayed employee badges.
Individual vendors like Chen Zhou were few and far between.
He approached a young woman at the service desk and asked, “Hello. I heard there’s a special promotion here for small street vendors. Is that true?”
The young woman blinked her innocent, wide eyes, clearly stumped by the question.
She froze for a full minute.
Page (2/3)
Page (3/3)
For a moment, Chen Zhou wondered whether he had come to the wrong place.
Then the woman suddenly began nodding vigorously.
“Yes! Sir, there is!”
Her response left Chen Zhou even more bewildered.
He felt compelled to clarify in advance. “I’m just a steamed-bun seller, not some major customer.”
The young woman nodded again.
“Those are exactly the individual businesses we’re looking for.”
She then called over her supervisor.
“What is it?”
The exhibition manager, Hu Zhilong, had been exchanging mutual compliments with his clients moments earlier.
The business owners who dealt with the company regularly had come to visit mainly in hopes of securing better discounts.
As for the purpose of this exhibition, it was not merely to consolidate Tianli’s hold over nearly half of the local market.
There was another goal as well: to target the lower-tier market.
After a period of investigation, they had discovered that vinegar packets from small shops and street vendors reached consumers in all kinds of ways.
The most common were the small packets of vinegar given away with takeout orders or packed alongside food to be carried home.
The profit from such a product might not be particularly high, but it could do wonders for promoting the brand.
Hu Zhilong remembered what his plainspoken general manager had said during a meeting:
“Just print a huge logo on the packaging. That’ll do the trick.”
Hu Zhilong wholeheartedly agreed.
The problem, however, lay with the sales department. Tianli’s vinegar was normally sold through distributors, and the interests involved were extremely complicated.
As a result, the company itself had almost no direct retail channels.
Finding small vendors was even more difficult.
To complete the general manager’s assignment, they would have to resort to advertising a giveaway of vinegar packets with eggs, which might attract a crowd of elderly men and women merely pretending to be legitimate customers...
Hearing the service desk call for him, Wang Zhilong walked over to Chen Zhou and the others.
“And who is this?”
The young woman at the desk introduced him. “This is Mr. Chen, the steamed-bun vendor.”
Wang Zhilong urged the young woman to hurry and bring over some products.
Then he cleared his throat and said to Chen Zhou,
“Mr. Chen, we have vinegar packets in small sachets that we can provide free of charge to individual vendors for trial use. Would you be interested in working with us?”
“I would.”
Page (3/3)